Tag: the war of terror

Niger Finds Itself Trapped in America’s Foreign Policy Roach Motel

Does even one American in hundred, make that one in a thousand, possibly one in a million, feel we must be involved militarily in Niger? I doubt it. But the U.S. military, from Commander In Chief Joe Biden on down, certainly do. He’s got 1,000 troops in Niger. The new Niger government wants them out.

US presence in Niger goes back to 2013. Authorized by President Obama, it has continued under both Trump and Biden. In 2015, 4 US troops were killed in an ambush. It made no dent in Obama’s foreign policy acquiescing in every cockamamie intervention the military demands.

Last July, a military group, the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP), seized power from a US friendly government. The new sheriff in town is demanding the US leave. When the US visited Niger recently to plead Uncle Sam’s case, they insulted Niger’s sovereignty by telling the CNSP to stop cozying up to Russia and Iran. The CNSP’s response? “Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism.”

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Why Torture Is A Failed Policy And Practice

Judge Napolitano was the inspiration for doing this post. He wrote an excellent piece in the Daily Wire last week commenting on the apparent collapse of the criminal case against Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks. The Judge wrote:

As the pre-trial hearings in the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others who are charged with masterminding the 9/11 attacks proceed at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, the government continues to stumble with its own witnesses. In hearings last week, government lawyers tried to demonstrate that statements the defendants made to CIA and FBI agents were voluntary.

When the government’s principal torturer, a now-retired psychologist, had difficulty recalling that during a torture session he threatened one of his victims by offering to slit the throat of the victim’s young son and that he had recounted that threat under oath in previous testimony, it became apparent to all in the courtroom and to those of us who monitor these awful proceedings that the government was encountering a strange and unexpected difficulty in defending the behavior of its torturers.

The Judge’s judicial instincts are spot on. But there is much more to this story. The American public, and much of the world, have been bamboozled into believing that torture is an effective interrogation technique. It is not. It is counter productive.

Hollywood and novelists have played a key role in my view of popularizing torture as a necessary evil. The TV show, 24, featuring Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer, routinely relied to torture to get info out of terrorists. Hell, even Supreme Court Justice Scalia, when he was alive, believed Jack Bauer had the right to torture:

“Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent’s rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.
“Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.

“So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes.”

Then there is the late Vince Flynn. As you can see from the image posted at the top of this piece, I was friends with Vince — at least until he because famous — and helped him with his first five books. His views on torture are his own. I suggested otherwise, but he explains his thinking in this interview with Robert Bidinotto:

Flynn: Yes. Here’s where I sit. It’s real simple. If al Qaeda signed the Geneva Convention, put on a uniform, stuck their flag in the ground, and said, “Let’s meet on the battlefield,” I would say: “Absolutely. Torture—you can’t do it. Period. End of discussion.” But we have an enemy that won’t put on a uniform, has not signed the Geneva Convention, hides behind men, women, and children, and then attacks men, women, and children—civilians.

I think it’s a joke that we are even having this debate, as a nation. I think that torture should take place only for high-value targets where we know they are withholding information that could help us bust up cells, financing, organization, and possible operations.

The problem is that because we are a civilized society, and because we’ve lost our mooring—we’ve lost our attachment to our Judeo-Christian beliefs—we’ve gone off on this little safari with PC. We think that we have to say things so that people will think, “He’s smart, he’s compassionate, he cares, he’s got a good heart.” The reality is that if you were to ask the American people, “When Mitch Rapp starts to torture some bad guy who knows where the nuke is, are you sitting there in the privacy of your home crying and saying, ‘Please stop torturing this guy’? Or are you saying, ‘Get him, Mitch! Get the information out of him!’”

Vince violated the Gannon Rule. Dick Gannon was my boss at State CT. He was a retired Marine Colonel and Vietnam Combat vet. He was fond of saying, “If it feels really good it is probably wrong.” What I tried to tell Vince was no matter how emotionally satisfying torturing a bad guy is for the purpose of entertaining an audience, in the real world it is counter productive and fails to produce reliable intelligence.

Unfortunately, most of the world labors under the false belief fostered by the Jack Bauers and Vince Flynns that the CIA is skilled and practiced in the art of torture. That is a lie. The opposite is true. The CIA training program for case officers offered zero instruction in torture or interrogation. The primary mission of a CIA operations officer is to recruit foreigners to spy for us — i.e., to commit treason against their own country. This process is a seduction, not coercion. If you have convinced someone to betray their country or their cause it better not be based on anger at you for inflicting pain or threatening to harm loved ones. That is a recipe for getting screwed over by your recruited source.

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US Drone Strike in Somalia May Have Killed Two Cuban Doctors

Al-Shabaab has said a February 15 US drone strike in southern Somalia that targeted the group killed two Cuban doctors who were being held hostage, an allegation Cuba is trying to confirm.

US Africa Command did not announce the strike but released a statement after the allegations about the two Cubans surfaced, saying it was assessing the strike. “The command will continue to assess the results of this operation and will provide additional information as available,” said AFRICOM spokeswoman Lennea Montandon.

The doctors, Dr. Landy Rodriguez Hernandez and Dr. Assel Herrera Correa, were kidnapped by al-Shabaab in Kenya back in 2019. Cuba’s Minister of Public Health José Ángel Portal Miranda said the Cuban government is in contact with their families and is looking to verify the claim.

The US frequently launches drone strikes against al-Shabaab in Somalia, but the war gets very little media coverage, and US operations are shrouded in secrecy. AFRICOM is also known for undercounting civilian casualties.

Earlier in the month, AFRICOM reported a drone strike that occurred on February 9 that it claims killed two al-Shabaab fighters. The command said the strike was launched in support of the US-backed Mogadishu-based government, which has been fighting a ground campaign against al-Shabaab.

The US is stepping up military aid for the Somali government and recently signed a deal to build five new military bases for the Danab Brigade, a special unit of the Somali army that’s armed and trained by the US. According to Task & Purpose, the project will cost over $100 million.

The US military hypes the threat of al-Shabaab due to its size and al-Qaeda affiliation, but it’s widely believed the group does not have ambitions outside of Somalia.

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UK steps up war on whistleblower journalism with new National Security Act

Under a repressive new act, British nationals could face prison for undermining London’s national security line. Intended to destroy WikiLeaks and others exposing war crimes, the law is a direct threat to critical national security journalism.

It was the afternoon of May 17 2023 and I had just arrived at London’s Luton Airport. I was on my way to the city of my birth to visit my family. Before landing, the pilot instructed all passengers to have their passports ready for inspection immediately upon disembarking the plane. Just then, I noticed a six-strong squad of stone-faced plainclothes British counter-terror officers waited on the tarmac, intensely studying the identification documents of all travelers.

As soon as the cops identified me, I was ordered to accompany them into the airport terminal without explanation. There, I was introduced to two officials whose names I could not learn, who subsequently referred to each other using nondescript callsigns. I was invited to be digitally strip searched, and subjected to an interrogation in which I had no right to silence, no right to refuse to answer questions, and no right to withhold pin numbers for my digital devices or sim cards. If I asserted any rights to privacy, I faced arrest and up to 48 hours in police custody. 

I chose to comply. And so it was that over the next five hours, I sat with a couple of anonymous counter-terror cops in an airless, windowless, excruciatingly hot back room. They fingerprinted me, took invasive DNA swabs, and probed every conceivable aspect of my private and professional life, friend and family connections, and educational background. They wanted to know why I write, say and think the things I do, the specifics of how I’m paid for my investigative journalism, and to which bank account.

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How Australian undercover police ‘fed’ an autistic 13-year-old’s fixation with Islamic State

Counter-terrorism police encouraged an autistic 13-year-old boy in his fixation on Islamic State in an undercover operation after his parents sought help from the authorities.

The boy, given the pseudonym Thomas Carrick, was later charged with terror offences after an undercover officer “fed his fixation” and “doomed” the rehabilitation efforts Thomas and his parents had engaged in, a Victorian children’s court magistrate found.

Thomas spent three months in custody before he was granted bail in October 2022, after an earlier bail was revoked because he failed to comply with conditions.

Thomas, an NDIS recipient with an IQ of 71, was first reported to police by Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and then by his parents because of his fixation with Islamic State, which included him accessing extremist material online and making threats to other students.

On 17 April 2021, his parents went to a police station and asked for help because Thomas was watching Islamic State-related videos on his computer and had asked his mother to buy bomb-making ingredients such as sulphur and acetone.

Thomas was investigated and charged with two terror offences by the Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT), which comprises Australian federal police, Victoria police and Asio members.

The court granted a permanent stay on the charges in October last year, but a copy of the decision has only recently been published.

“The community would not expect law enforcement officers to encourage a 13-14 year old child towards racial hatred, distrust of police and violent extremism, encouraging the child’s fixation on ISIS,” magistrate Lesley Fleming said in the decision.

“The community would not expect law enforcement to use the guise of a rehabilitation service to entice the parents of a troubled child to engage in a process that results in potential harm to the child.

“The conduct engaged in by the JCTT and the AFP falls so profoundly short of the minimum standards expected of law enforcement offices [sic] that to refuse this [stay] application would be to condone and encourage further instances of such conduct.”

Fleming found the JCTT also deliberately delayed charging Thomas with offences until after he turned 14, as it made it harder for him to use the defence of doli incapax, which refers to the concept that a child is not criminally responsible for their actions.

Police also inappropriately searched Thomas’s property shortly before he was charged, Fleming found.

“There was a deliberate, invasive and totally inappropriate search of [Thomas’s] bedroom without lawful excuse.

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US troops should have left Syria and Iraq long ago

The death of three Americans in Jordan due to an attack by the “Islamic Resistance in Iraq” was an avoidable tragedy. It should prompt the United States to speed up its exit from Syria and Iraq, something policy makers have been contemplating for some time. Washington must minimize its risks. To dig in and escalate would be a mistake that is likely to lead to more Americans killed. The mission that brought U.S. troops to Iraq and Syria – to destroy ISIS – has been accomplished. Residual policing of ISIS remnants can be undertaken from bases in Qatar, Kuwait and Turkey.

Hawks in Washington insist that by striking Iran directly and hard, the U.S. can bring security to its troops, the danger will subside because Iran understands force. But this analysis misunderstands the region and minimizes the dangers arrayed against U.S. troops. Iran has been committed to pushing U.S. troops out of Iraq and Syria, something its leaders articulated clearly following an earlier use of U.S. force, the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Suleimani in 2020. Iran will not back down if the U.S. assassinates more of its leaders or strikes infrastructure in Iran for the simple reason that it has the upper hand in the region.

But Iran is far from being the only government that wants U.S. troops out. Turkey, Iraq and Syria are equally determined to drive the U.S. from its bases. Every single government in the region is demanding that U.S. troops leave. Turkey has escalated its war against America, not by sending missiles and drones against U.S. bases, but by sending them against America’s allies in northeast Syria and the Kurdish region of Iraq. Turkey has assassinated dozens of YPG leaders and destroyed important infrastructure. It has mobilized Syrian opposition groups under its control to attack the Syrian Democratic Forces that Washington relies on. These attacks are designed to weaken the U.S. position in the region and eventually drive it from northeast Syria.

The Syrian government is also determined to drive Americans from its soil. It accuses Washington of illegally occupying 30% of its territory and stealing its oil to subsidize the quasi-independent territory the U.S. has established in northeast Syria. As a consequence, the majority of Syrians languish in poverty and must survive with only a few hours of electricity per day, while the economy remains paralyzed by U.S. sanctions. They want the U.S. out.

The Iraqi government is also demanding that U.S. troops leave. It was provoked into doing so by Washington’s January 4 assassination of Mushtaq al-Jawari, a leader of Harakat al-Nujaba, one of the Shi’a militias that belongs to the popular mobilization forces. Washington targeted him in retribution for an earlier attack on a U.S. base. Did this show of force cow the Harakat al-Nujaba or the popular mobilization forces? No. On the contrary, it led to an escalating drumbeat of missile and drone attacks on American bases.

But the militias were not the only forces to go on the offensive, the Iraqi government did as well. Because the popular mobilization forces are officially under Baghdad’s control, the U.S. found itself effectively at war with the central government. Prime Minister Sudani cannot ignore them. To save his government, Sudani had to ask U.S. forces to leave. Both he and Iraq’s president, as well as almost every Iraqi politician, insist that Iraq not be turned into a proxy battleground.

Striking Iran will not solve America’s problems in the region. Biden’s support for Israel’s war against the Palestinians has inflamed anti-American and anti-Western feelings across the entire Arab world. It has breathed new life into the resistance front. Only yesterday, most Arabs scoffed at it for being impotent and doing nothing to deter Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians. Because of Gaza, Arabs are once again rooting for resistance.

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Israel, the US, and the Endless War on Terror

In a New Yorker piece published five days after the attacks of Sept.11, 2001, American critic and public intellectual Susan Sontag wrote, “Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen.” Sontag’s desire to contextualize the 9/11 attacks was an instant challenge to the narratives that President George W. Bush would soon deploy, painting the United States as a country of peace and, most importantly, innocent of any wrongdoing. While the rhetorical strategies he developed to justify what came to be known as the Global War on Terror have continued to this day, they were not only eagerly embraced by Israel in 2001, they also lie at the heart of that country’s justification of the genocidal campaign that’s been waged against the Palestinian people since Oct. 7, 2023.

On Sept. 20, 2001, President Bush delivered a speech to Congress in which he shared a carefully constructed storyline that would justify endless war. The United States, he said, was attacked because the terrorists “hate our freedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” In that official response to the 9/11 attacks, he also used the phrase “war on terror” for the first time, stating (all too ominously in retrospect): “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.”

“Americans are asking,” he went on, “why do they hate us?” And then he provided a framework for understanding the motives of the “terrorists” precluding the possibility that American actions prior to 9/11 could in any way have explained the attacks. In other words, he positioned his country as a blameless victim, shoved without warning into a “post-9/11 world.” As Bush put it, “All of this was brought upon us in a single day — and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack.” As scholar Richard Jackson later noted, the president’s use of “our war on terror” constituted “a very carefully and deliberately constructed public discourse… specifically designed to make the war seem reasonable, responsible, and inherently ‘good.’”

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Judge orders release of ‘Newburgh Four’ defendant and blasts FBI’s role in terror sting

A man convicted in a post-9/11 terrorism sting was ordered freed from prison by a judge who criticized the FBI for relying on an “unsavory” confidential informant for an agency-invented conspiracy to blow up New York synagogues and shoot down National Guard planes.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on Friday granted James Cromitie, 58, compassionate release from prison six months after she ordered the release of his three co-defendants, known as the Newburgh Four, for similar reasons. The four men from the small river city 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of New York City were convicted of terrorism charges in 2010.

Cromitie has served 15 years of his 25-year minimum sentence. The New York-based judge ordered Cromitie’s sentence to be reduced to time served plus 90 days.

Prosecutors in the high-profile case said the Newburgh defendants spent months scouting targets and securing what they thought were explosives and a surface-to-air missile, aiming to shoot down planes at the Air National Guard base in Newburgh and blow up synagogues in the Bronx. They were arrested after allegedly planting “bombs” that were packed with inert explosives supplied by the FBI.

Critics have accused federal agents of entrapping a group men who were down on their luck after doing prison time.

In a scathing ruling, McMahon wrote that the FBI invented the conspiracy and identified the targets. Cromitie and his codefendants, she wrote, “would not have, and could not have, devised on their own” a criminal plot involving missiles.

“The notion that Cromitie was selected as a ‘leader’ by the co-defendants is inconceivable, given his well-documented buffoonery and ineptitude,” she wrote.

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UNDERCOVER FBI AGENTS HELPED AUTISTIC TEEN PLAN TRIP TO JOIN ISIS

HUMZAH MASHKOOR HAD just cleared security at Denver International Airport when the FBI showed up. The agents had come to arrest the 18-year-old, who is diagnosed with a developmental disability, and charge him with terror-related crimes. At the time of the arrest, a relative later saidOpens in a new tab in court, Mashkoor was reading “Diary of a Wimpy KidOpens in a new tab,” a book written for elementary school children.

Mashkoor had gone to the airport on December 18 to fly to Dubai, and from there to either Syria or Afghanistan, as part of his alleged plot to join the Islamic State. The trip had been spurred by over a year of online exchanges starting when Mashkoor was 16 years old with four people he believed were members of ISIS. According to the Justice Department’s criminal complaintOpens in a new tab, the four were actually undercover FBI agents. As a result of his conversations with the FBI, Mashkoor could face a lengthy sentence for attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

At an initial court hearing, family members said that Mashkoor, who had turned 18 just a few weeks prior to the arrest, had intellectual difficulties and been diagnosed with autism. Despite acknowledging Mashkoor’s family support and his young age, the judge ordered that he be detained while awaiting trial.

“It’s not lost on this court that Mr. Mashkoor is a young man with possible mental illness and the diagnosis of high-functioning autism. It is clear he has a sea of familial support,” the judge said. “But based on this evidence, there’s no reasonable assurance here that the court can simply chalk all this up to the defendant simply being a young man.”

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Colorado teenager is charged with trying to join ISIS when he was 16: Boy was arrested trying to board a flight in Denver after undercover FBI agents found him posting on social media

A Colorado teen has been charged with providing support to ISIS after allegedly planning to fly and join the terrorist organization from when he was just 16 years old. 

Humzah Mashkoor, who is now 18, was arrested on Monday at Denver Airport, where he was trying to fly to the UAE en route to Afghanistan, prosecutors said.

He has since been charged with knowingly providing or attempting or conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

His arrest is the culmination of a two-year investigation after the FBI first became aware of Mashkoor expressing support for the terrorist group on social media in 2021 and even sharing videos of executions. 

Mashkoor was born in the US but spent time in Afghanistan and allegedly desperately wanted to return to fight for the Islamic State. 

In September 2022, he began talking to an undercover FBI employee online who was posing as a ISIS supporter. 

The complaint says he ‘repeatedly expressed his intent to travel in order to join ISIS as a fighter, to provide money to ISIS to support their efforts, and to recruit others to also support ISIS through travel and/or financial contributions.’ 

He also ‘expressed frustration that he was unable to travel to join ISIS or provide money to ISIS to support their efforts because he was not yet 18.’ 

In one of the most serious incidents, he allegedly ‘indicated, using coded language, that an ISIS contact suggested to Mashkoor that he (Mashkoor) conduct an attack in the United States.’ 

At one point, he told the agent: ‘I am prepared to do anything which they require me to do … I just want to be used as soon as possible, gun attacks.

‘I have no training, I used to have some practice with guns with I was younger. But that is it.’ 

As his 18th birthday in November approached, he allegedly started making concrete plans to travel to join ISIS and discussed a plan to get married. 

According to the complaint, he told one undercover agent: ‘Once we go there’s no turning back… We leave behind everything… Our family’s… Our homes… Our friends… For the sake of Allah swt… And pleasing him…

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